Studio Art Student Art Awards

The Newcomb Art Department is pleased to announce the 2020 Studio Art Student Art Awards.

Class of 1914 award    Amelia Wiygul

Through the completion of majors in both Studio Art and Environmental Studies, Amelia Wiygul has demonstrated exceptional dedication to her academic and artistic pursuits at Tulane. Her work with drawing, painting, and mixed media presents unique visions of the natural world, including an ambitious hand-drawn eco-feminist graphic novel that envisions a future in which urban spaces and nature are no longer separate. Amelia’s commitment to her work is unwavering, and her interdisciplinary artistic endeavors offer a much-needed sense of hope for a sustainable environmental future.


Alberta “Rusty” Collier Memorial Award in 3D Art   Andrew Mahaffie

Andrew Mahaffie uses his sculpture as a reflection of his inner state with a focus on time.  He works with glass and metal to create both large scale and small detail heavy pieces.  In his larger works, he features domestic bottle glass and a variety of casting techniques to create visually dominating sculptures.  The recycled material creates a unique ability to have different opacities within the glass based on thickness, and the use of hot casting techniques adds a powerful physicality and prominent texture to the works.  In his smaller sculpture he works with blowing and hot sculpting techniques to create highly detailed dramatic series.  His adoption of so many different styles of working with glass reflects his love and fascination with the material and a desire to continue to accumulate techniques to shape it.


Sandy Chism Award in Painting    Elizabeth Hopmann

In her four years at Tulane, Elizabeth Hopmann has fearlessly embraced the expansive potential of ceramic and painting mediums.  Her experimentation and deep curiosities have sharpened, solidified, and refined her craft far beyond what instructors could individually impart.  She is truly and impressively a student of the material. Recent work offers a resolute self and social awareness as well as the pleasure and multivalency of paint as a communicative medium.  Elizabeth's work possesses the rare and promising balance of being simultaneously vulnerable and imposing.

Alberta “Rusty” Collier Memorial Award in 2D Art   Isabella Scott

Current and former professors of Isabella Scott have admired her sharp-eyed and steady focus, as well as her unwavering consistency as a student and painter.  Her attendance to class is foremost an attendance to her craft, which she has pursued rigorously for four years.  The images that come from her hand are fashioned with meticulous precision, tenderness, honesty, and fidelity.  Isabella's paintings emerge from what is personal and forthright, yet in their cumulative variety offer something magnetic and mysterious.

Nell Pomeroy O’Brien Award      Zora Parker

Zora operates under a quiet sense of mindfulness. She takes authority in her decisive artist practice but is not so stern that she is always open to suggestions and criticism. In class her works have shown her willingness to share her love of creatures and insects as well as her fascination with the fantastical. My hope is that she continues to develop her practice in printmaking because of her drive and attention to detail. She can truly excel in this medium.

Juanita Gonzales Memorial Fund in Ceramics     Emma Conroy

Emma Conroy has distinguished herself as a BFA student, presenting a successful thesis exhibition that investigates the individual's relationship to vulnerability, risk and power. Working in ceramics and glass, Emma had developed exciting new sculptures that reference organic forms such as spines and bones, suggesting structures that are dynamic and simultaneously fragile and menacing,  Emma's thoughtful work process reveals her long term commitment to visual art, and her interest in a dialog with a wide range of viewers. In her time at Tulane, Emma has gained excellent and comprehensive skills in ceramics, spanning clay fabrication, glaze experimentation and firing a wide range of kilns. Always a team played in the studio, her positive outlook and willingness to share information and help her colleagues, contribute to make her this years outstanding candidate for the Juanita Gonzales Memorial prize in Ceramics.